Ep. 12 Monty Waldin interviews Alessio Planeta of Planeta Winery | Discover Italian Regions: Sicily / Sicilia

Italian wine podcast. Chinching with Italian wine people. Hello. My name is Monty Walden. I'm with Alecio Planeta from the Palleta winery in Sicily. When I say winery, you've actually got more than one how many more. Let me explain a little bit, why you have so many wine if you start to Well, we started something more than twenty years ago in Memfi and Sambuca on the West part of C City where I was born where my family's visits in Century. We were there and My grandfather was a classic old sicilian baron, but was a bit different from the other one because he liked very much to do agriculture and to do agriculture in a serious way So he was born in eighteen ninety three. So I don't know if you can imagine what was Sicily at that time. Very difficult, especially the West southwest part of Sicily with bandit with any kind of problem. Far from the rest of the world, far from everything, really. We had our own authorization, you know. By the way, my grandfather was a very open mind, man, and it was agriculture in a modern way. And in the fifties, he he had some grapes. He make wine for the village. But in the fifties, he decided to make a cooperative with other person in in the area of Manhattan and he founded a cooperative. This cooperative was immediately after my uncle Diego became president of this cooperative, and the cooperative go very fast from eight members to two thousand members and became very, very big. My my my uncle Diego is maybe, one of the most important person in the wine, because in Sicily, because in the 80s, when Sicily was, start to rethink about himself, because Sicily was full of vineyards. Sicily had at that time hundred and forty thousand extra so we were bigger than Australia to give you an idea. So at that time, you said it was full of wine, but it was not able to sell wine. We produced the wrong wine. We didn't go in the market. So at that time, started work done by a group of producer, a group of person that start from experimenting in the vineyards first in the winery after and start to go around the world. CCC, maybe people don't know, but CCC was the first region of Italy come all together in the same pavilion in Italy. And since it started to work very well, and this was the end, the middle of '80s. Did they start experimenting new variety in the '80s was very important for to plant French grapes because it was too early to go in the market, talking about Nello Dávola, and, and, Colorado, or whatever. When you say French maybe means more like carbonet? Mostly chardonnay, it was very important because it was a couple of Chadona from Sicily that really ringer to be the belt of of the market. And, mostly, and then Sierra and then Marlon Cabernet. So these four grapes, that was very important to say, to go to a fair to say here, here we are. So this is what we have done at that time. And so I will talk about us in the middle of eighties. We are a big family. My father, they are seven brothers, and we are fifteen cousins. Can you imagine what is a a Christmas party or whatever? By the way, we in eighty five, we plant, vineyards in the area of Sandbuca and the Southwest in a beautiful place. And we plant fifty excess vineyards, and my generation start to be part of this In ninety five, after ten years of experimentation, we've done the first wineries and the first win on the market. And it was ninety six. So in ninety six, Micas in Franchesca, that, she's Mallory's English, so she speaks English very well, and she traveled a lot to study marketing. I study agriculture and my brother study economy. We start three of us. I was making the wine, my cousin, do marketing and my brother sells the wine. But was that the ability to deliberately choose university says, alright, you're going to do the selling? I'm going to do them. Or was it just coincidence that you? No. It was something, you know, since I was very, very young, I like to spend my holidays or my weekend in the country area. I was the strange one that not stay in the city, but stay in the country. So it was, something natural that I became the one that studied their culture and made wines and they studied marketing and whatever. So we we have a we start in the right moment, maybe playing the right music. And things works well. Those works very well. And the first maybe good idea we had in the 80s was to rethink about Brazilian vineyards. So a little bit some new varieties, a little bit of rediscovering some old grapes And the second maybe good idea was in ninety six, ninety seven. When after that we start to go around the market, there was a big demand of a c c and Chardon, we start to think about the future. The future was to moved from MMPi from Sanduqa where it was born to produce some wine that was tradition and history of CCino wine. I had a collection, a big collection of books about wine and, Viticulture and agriculture. Especially from the south. And once I found the book and there was a chapter, then there was a ghost wine from Sicily. And there were a few wines there, and I start to, you know, to be curious about this. And so in ninety seven, we do something that was not easy at that time. So we say, okay, we go out from our farm, from the place where we was born, where we stayed in Century to producing one in other part of Sicily. We go first to Victoria, for the China's world in Victoria. Than in Notto in the southeast of Sicily, in the southern point of all Italy and to make it the Nero Dawala from Notto, then we went to Aetna. And now in the last years, we went to Capo Milazzo where it is very small operation. The name is Maertino. In each of this place, we have done first research of the Bestair War, then we plan the vineyards. And some years later, we have done the winery. So a plant is like a collection of five small wineries around Sicily dedicated only to the wine of the area. Just be like your cousins. You have all these cousins and they have all these wineries. I mean, you know, so you don't like keeping these complications. You know, yeah, five of us are involved with directly in the business. And, but it's funny to have a family company, sicilian family company is huge. We do meetings always with some food. So our business review is eating and talking about about business. At the same time. All of the wineries are in a beautiful place. So in place that we choose because the combination between the right around the area, the landscape is perfect. And since then few years, so we do hospitality. We had something like a small boutique hotel in Memphis and any one area can be visited and any one area is in some ways special. I mean, we often when people think about Southern Italy, they often have a sort of negative perception of being a little bit backward, very slow to change, resistant to to new ideas, but you really were ahead of the curve in terms of matching grape varieties to, to the, to particular soil types and climates, choosing your local grape varieties. Well, and also the idea of wine is is it there's, or videos as a sort of tourist. What's your next step gonna be? But first talking about the south, I think that people like to know that the south of of Italy is the hurt of all materarium. If you think that the memorandum food is now that maybe the most influent food maybe in the world, I don't know. And in Sicily, olive oil, pasta, tomatoes, citrus, egg, the homeland, I don't want to talk about wines, but even if also about wines, we produce wine consistently since twenty seventh century. Of course, we sicilient go we are slow. We live in a slow way. So, but there is a very a lot of new things that are going to happen in this in the last years about food and wine. It was really the potential of Sicily is great. So what do you, I mean, when you get home, obviously you got so many response, but when you get home and all you want to unwind, did one way about it? Is it cooking or you need a favorite dish that you have, or do you just? No, no, I like very much to cook. I like very much to cook some kind of pasta with vegetables. So what I do usually is to go in the, you say garden in the orto, in the middle garden. That I have in my house. I live in, I have a house in the city and a house in the country area in Memphis near the scene, a lovely place. Southwest of City is very wide and very pure and very clean. This is lovely. And so I usually cook vegetables. I make parts and valables. And for me, one of the big, the best pleasure of life is to drink wine while you cook, not usually when you finish to cook, you finish the bottle of wine. So this is what we're going to do. And then my family, we are a big family, with very good cookers. And every time we do, we eat all together, there is a discussion about, food and, you know, CCira talk always about food. Okay, listen. Let's see a benefit. We could talk possibly for several days about all the things that you've done, all the things that you will do. Let's leave that for another conversation. I hope to come down to sicily to see you sometime. And I really do think that as I said before, you're, you're ahead of the curve, and I should get the get the sense that you're not resting on your lorries. You've got plenty of plans up your sleeves. So, Planeta is definitely the winery to follow. Thank you very much for talking to us today. Thank you very much for all of you. Follow us at Italian wine podcast on Facebook.